How To Get Your Life Together (7 Tips)

One could seek a life coach to help solve their problems, but not everyone has that luxury. If you’re reading this, you already know life is rough. But these tips might help you figure out how to get your life together.

It can seem like you’re struggling to stay above water or catch your breath. We deal with people letting us down, plans getting changed, and failure in pursuing our dreams.

But you don’t have to be a victim of your circumstances. You can learn how to get your life together and be filled with peace and happiness.

Your bad feelings don’t have to be reality. Thoughts can guide us where we want, and actions can change emotions.

You just have to try. Believe you can persevere through the challenges you’re in right now. Believe you can get your life together.

Change doesn’t come overnight, but it does build over time. If 2021 was your worst year, make 2022 your best year. Here are seven tips on how to get your life together.

Table Of Contents open

How to get your life together

1. Quit complaining all the time

We all got problems, and it’s acceptable to talk them out sometimes. But if you’re not looking for solutions and just venting all the time, it’ll be harder to get your life together.

You’ll just stay in a consistent negative mindset that only slows you down. Not to mention people won’t want to talk to you as much, which means you won’t have much of a support system.

Look at your own experiences. Have you ever found that you get a lot done when you’re venting all the time? It would seem like for most people, they don’t.

A psychological term sometimes associated with this consistent negative mindset is rumination. It’s defined as focused attention on the symptoms, causes, and consequences of one’s distress rather than on solutions.

If you struggle with this kind of thinking, you can learn how to stop ruminating. A few tips to stop ruminating include:

Distracting yourself
Thinking of actionable solutions
Understanding your triggers
Meditating
Exercising

In a situation that’s bothering me, I either find a way to fix it or just wait it out. I try to put my mind on the better moments ahead in my life.

We all get a little negative every now and then. The problem isn’t getting negative; the problem is staying negative.

If you’re going to complain, make it short. One or two lines of frustration, then either fix the problem or focus on something else. You can be more likely to get your life together if you keep your attention on finding ways to succeed.

2. Live life proactively

Choose to act sooner rather than later. Procrastinating only leads to tasks building up and causing you more stress in life.

Think of your thoughts and actions like a car. Your thoughts are your steering wheel, and your actions are your acceleration.

When you know the direction to go in your thoughts, you move forward through your actions. I like what retired admiral William McRaven says about actions. In a speech, he said it was important to make your bed every day.

It can be the first success of your day and help set the tone for the rest of it. You could make your bed, do jumping jacks, or do anything you feel that sets a positive tone for you.

There are people who let life happen to them, and there are people who make the life they want happen. If you just do nothing, people and circumstances will eventually decide how your life is going to go.

But if you do something, you get a chance to decide how your life will be. Be the person that’s proactive and not reactive. Be intentional about what you do in your day and what you try to accomplish.

3. Create more organization in your life

Using business as an analogy again, a good one operates in an organized manner. Inventory is put in a specific place for easy access. All their operations run on a schedule.

It usually results in the business being productive and successful. The same can be true in your life. Let’s start with putting things in their place.

Maybe you can take time to declutter your closet. It can make your morning easier to find something to wear quicker.

You can work to not only organize your room but every other place in your house. Have your home set up to help you function like a well-oiled machine.

Scheduling is another big thing you can do to get things together. The great thing about schedules is they don’t have to be strict.

Where you can, choose to make your schedule flexible for things that may come up. The main thing is to have a general idea of what you want to accomplish in your day. Organization gives your life structure, which gives you more of a solid foundation for success.

4. Have a system to reach long-term goals

A system is doing something every day that helps you achieve your personal goals. It’s kind of somewhat like the “practice makes perfect” philosophy.

The more you do something, the more likely you’re going to get better at it. As an example, maybe you’re a songwriter.

You could try writing one song every day to develop your craft. If you’re trying to learn a new skill, find a way to practice it daily.

You might not become an expert in a year, but you’re a lot better than you were before. You can break down your big goals into smaller goals that lead you to accomplish them.

Think about where you’ll need to start, what you’ll need to do, what resources you’ll need to have and the potential pitfalls. Have a vision for how much you want to have accomplished within six months, a year, or even five years.

5. Have True Friends, Not Toxic People

True friends keep you motivated and encouraged as you work through your journey in life. Toxic people will constantly talk down to you and make you feel like your dreams are unattainable.

True friends will offer as much help as they can and be there to listen when you need it. Toxic people will mostly take from you and suck all of your energy with their negativity.

Your success is as much to do with the people you surround yourself with as it is with the work that you put in. While sometimes negative people need good friends to help them see a better way, at a certain point, you need to protect your energy.

That may mean limiting your time with certain people or completely cutting them out. Whichever you decide, make sure the people that get most of your time and attention in life are those who build you up.

6. Settle on what you truly desire

What do you really want in life? When you close your eyes and think of what would make you happy, what do you see? You can’t fulfill your dreams if you don’t know what they are.

Freidrich Nietzsche once said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.” When you know why you’re working hard in life, you push through adversity. You find the inner strength to keep walking your path.

Everyone has a future they dream about happening.

A life traveling on the road maybe, or perhaps a life in the mountains just listening to nature.

Look back at your childhood. Was there something there that’s still in your heart today?

Think about what you feel right now. After everything you’ve been through in life, has something stuck out as what really matters to you?

These reflections can help you realize what it is you truly desire. Once you realize it, settle on that desire being your pursuit. I like the way one author puts it. “Successful people don’t wish for success; they decide to pursue it.”

7. Take care of yourself

Taking care of yourself helps you to be more productive. If you don’t sleep enough, eat right, and exercise, you have very low energy.

You’re less productive and potentially more mentally and emotionally unwell. Your mind and body are not indestructible. Like an item in your home, if it’s not taken care of, it’ll eventually wear and tear down.

Our elders are a lesson to us. The ones who’ve taken care of themselves are on no drugs and still able to move around.

The ones who haven’t had a real difficult time continuing to live. Beyond feeling good in our elderly years, you have an incentive that’s even more immediate.

Eating right can involve limiting sugar, caffeine, and eating more whole foods rather than processed foods. Exercise can be as simple as just taking a 15 to 20-minute walk throughout the week.

The great thing about exercising is it can help you sleep better. With better sleep, you’re more energized to be productive in your day.

Here are some other articles that can help you in your journey:

Inspiring video on changing your life

Watch this video on YouTube